


But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep

by Glump



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post Season 4, don't read if you haven't watched it, for season 4, heavy spoilers, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 01:29:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18768424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glump/pseuds/Glump
Summary: Lucifer remembers everything about hell.But he doesn’t remember ever feeling cold down here.





	But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't read if you haven't finished season 4. I don't want to spoil anything for you. 
> 
> Watch season 4, it is absolutely amazing. This is a little something that comes after, chronologically.   
> The title is taken from a Robert Frost poem called "Stopping by woods on a snowy evening". It's a beautiful piece of work so check it out if poetry is your jam. 
> 
> Enjoy!

He’s freezing. He doesn’t remember hell being so cold.   
Lucifer remembers everything else about hell, though.   
Ash flakes onto his shoulders, his hair, turns his wings a ghastly grey after just minutes. His demons have long heard the tale of their king’s anger in the chapel over the half human child. They don’t understand the reason for his fury, but they duck their heads when he walks by.   
Lucifer made a symbol of Dromos. He strung him up, skinned him alive and told everyone that got too close that they’d end the same way if they dared disrespect their king. They may be condemned to not understand the reason, but anger they understand. They respect leadership. He is, after all, the only king they’ve ever known.   
Lucifer remembers the ash and the demons and the things it takes to control them. He remembers the brimstone and the screams and the sheer vastness of hell. But he can’t remember hell being so cold. 

Lucifer spends his days sitting on his throne or walking the halls. He’s a quiet king these days, quieter.  
No one approaches him, not for a while.   
Some gather the courage only to be shot down immediately. They don’t make the same mistake twice.   
So it’s lonely. 

He misses Maze. 

Time is different down here. Days are endless, the minutes wrapping themselves around his neck, tighter and tighter until he can’t breathe anymore. Time is different down here, and he has forever to spend.   
Lucifer’s thoughts keep circling back to Chloe, and it hurts too much, makes his eyes sting with more than just ash particles, so he benches those.   
He thinks of Ella instead. Sweet Miss Lopez, Ella, who never believed him but trusted him willingly, who followed him to Vegas, who made him go to church and pulled him into her arms because somehow, she knew that he needed a friend.   
Lucifer thinks about Linda, too. He wonders how little Charlie is doing, if he’s got his wings yet, if he’s safe and loved and sleeping in her arms. He wonders if Amenadiel is with them and if they’re happy. 

He hopes they are. 

And then sometimes he thinks about Daniel.   
The last time Lucifer saw him he seemed so unhinged and empty and desperate, still heavily grieving the death of Charlotte. And Lucifer understands, didn’t understand before but does now. He understands what it’s like to be ripped from the person you love. 

Lucifer strides through hell with masked emotions, appearing strong and capable and filled with a quiet rage, never letting on just how much he grieves.   
And he does grieve. 

He tries not to think of her, of Chloe, but it’s impossible and time runs so slowly, and every thought brings him back to her.   
That life is over now, he says to himself. And he slices through skin and bones and sinew and he will tell himself that it is over. That life is over now, he says and loses himself in his victim’s pain before he remembers how blue her eyes are when she cries. 

Lucifer remembers everything about hell.   
But he doesn’t remember ever feeling cold down here. 

At night, when he retreats to a heavily guarded room made of brimstone and demon steel, he wraps his wings around his shivering form. Lucifer hides his head in their feathers and remembers a time when the LA sun made his eyes water with its heat.   
He remembers pool parties and sex on the beach and burning his scalp on long cases with the Detective. 

Lucifer knows that he’s not really cold, that hell isn’t any cooler or draftier than before or magically different in any way. Lucifer knows that the cold that befalls his body isn’t of this world, it comes from deep inside and there’s no amount of pressing into ashy feathers that’s going to warm him up again.   
He misses her, yearns for her more every day. 

He becomes desperate for her voice and starts filling the silence between the screams with memories – of her hand resting on his arm or her head resting on his chest or her lips moving over his.   
He turns into a vengeful king, a ruler with no mercy. He’s always been like that, he thinks, but it’s always good to turn it up a notch, to prove without a doubt that hell is a place for the damned. 

Lucifer spends his days on his throne or walking his halls and his nights curled under wings that he once cursed so much.   
Eventually he comes to curse them again. They’re good against the clammy feelings. But they’re also a reminder that she’s so close, just a few long strokes of wind away, but still unreachable.   
He can’t go back. He’s exhausted his resources and messed it all up and he can’t ever come back. That life is over now, he says to himself.   
He thinks of Maze again, of Linda and Amenadiel and little Charlie, of Dan and Ella.   
And he thinks of her. 

Oh, what he would give, to feel her gaze on him one more time. He grieves and rules over hell and never shows how broken he is.   
At night, sometimes, he’ll whisper to her, pray that somehow, she can hear him and reply.   
He never gets an answer. 

Hell is colder and Chloe is gone, and ash coats his wings and that life is over now.


End file.
